Company

Software provider Playech, niche defence company Chemring and media stock Mecom Group were the notable companies reporting today.

Playtech the designer and licensor of software for the online, mobile and land-based gaming industry, saw its gross income rise 23% to €137.3m (2008: €111.5 million), reflecting first time income from associate, William Hill Online.

Kraft Foods will be questioned over whether it intentionally misled Cadbury workers over plans to keep open the chocolate manufacturer's UK factory in Keynsham.

Kraft's vice-president Marc Firestone will face the House of Commons' Business Committee and will need to qualify the US food company's decision to continue with the closure of Cadbury's Keynsham factory despite pledging to keep it open during the sensitive takeover negotiations.

The FTSE rose slightly on opening today. In what was a fairly quiet morning for reports, financial company Close Brothers showed a fall in profits in its half year results to the end of January 2010.

Adjusted operating profit for the period was £62.5m (2009: £64.9 million), which represented a 4% reduction year on year.

If the man on the street had to name one stock that went plummeting today, British Airways (BA) would seem like a fair bet. More than half a million of the London-listed airline's passengers are facing strike disruption this month, after the Unite trade union announced it was going on strike over two consecutive weekends. Quite apart from the impact of potential chaos over those two weekends, BA will face massive brand damage.

If you have to book a flight in the next few days, you're hardly going to go with an airline that might see 12,000 of its flight attendants refusing to work – especially since they are threatening future strike action if a deal is not struck.